The Market for Criminality: Money, Muscle and Elections in India

Vaishnav, Milan

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1928011

Cited by 29 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Existing studies typically focus on the selection of these candidates; some examine the response of voters to information on criminal status or criminal charges and the potential mitigating effect of caste politics (Banerjee et al 2014, Charchard 2014. Others examine the selection of these candidates by political parties (Aidt et al 2012, Tiwari 2014, Vaishnav 2011a, 2011b, 2011c. However, this growing body of literature on preferences over politician type and how to fight the selection of corrupt politician implicitly assumes that such politicians are less desirable for their constituencies, although the actual effect is unknown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India

Prakash

Rockmore

Uppal

2019

Journal of Development Economics

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We study the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians to state legislative assemblies in India on the subsequent economic performance of their constituencies. Using data on the criminal background of candidates running for state assembly elections and a constituency-level measure of economic activity proxied by intensity of night-time lights, we employ a regression discontinuity design that controls for unobserved heterogeneity across constituencies and find 22-percentage point lower yearly growth in the intensity of night-time lights arising from the election of a criminally accused politician. These effects are driven by serious, financial and the number of criminal charges and appear to be concentrated in the less developed and more corrupt Indian states. Similar findings emerge for the provision of public goods using data on India's major rural roads construction program.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India

Prakash

Rockmore

Uppal

2019

Journal of Development Economics

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“…5 In contrast, Vaishnav (2011) These ndings are contradicted by Banerjee et al (2009). Their evidence in a eld experiment suggests that voters in rural India tend to vote on caste (ethnic) considerations even after being provided with information on the criminal background details of the contesting candidates.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 85%

“…An alternative explanation within our model framework, which is supported by anecdotal evidence, is that part of an MP's utility can come from rent extraction (cf. Fisman et al, 2014 andKapur andVaishnav, 2011). If more developed constituencies oer better rent-seeking opportunities for criminal MPs, this increases their utility from re-election, and can also narrow the eort gap between criminal and non-criminal types as criminal types strive to maintain access to this resource.…”

Section: Parliamentary Work 5 Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crime, Incentives and Political Effort: A Model and Empirical Application for India

2015

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We develop a model of the incentives faced by members of parliament (MPs) when deciding whether to engage in eort for their constituencies to assess the eects of their having a criminal background. Political representatives with criminal backgrounds are considered a great problem in many countries. In particular in India, a public disclosure revealed that a large proportion of politicians currently face criminal charges. This has led to a heated public debate and emerging literature assessing the causes and eects of this disturbing phenomenon. We use a comprehensive set of three proxies to meausure eort in the 14 th Lok Sabha over the 2004-2009 legislative period: attendance rates, parliamentary activity, and utilization rates of a local area development fund. We nd that MPs facing criminal accusations exhibit on average about 5% lower attendance rates and lower fund utilization rates, and less (but insignicantly) parliamentary activity. As predicted by the model, these dierences depend on the development level of the constituency, a proxy for rent-seeking possibilities and monitoring intensity. We argue and demonstrate why these negative relations should constitute an upper bound estimate of the causal eect, and show that even under conservative assumptions the eect is unlikely to be caused by unaccounted selection-bias. Terms of use: Documents in

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“…' Vaishnav (2011) does find evidence of that. Using data (filed through affidavits by the candidates) for Assembly elections between 2003 and 2009, he finds that money and 'muscle' power are complimentary.…”

Section: Introduction Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 94%

Elections in India

Mukhopadhyay

2014

Review of Market Integration

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The two major concerns in Indian electoral system are enormous spending and increased criminalisation of politics. While roughly one-third of all elected offices (state or national) have members with some criminal charges, the spending in 2009 general elections exceeded the total spends in the US general elections held a year earlier. This article links the two. We develop a theoretical model that views candidates as a strategic choice by the parties. We propose a two-dimensional contest function. In this framework we analyse the likely scenarios when a party chooses candidates with criminal records as well as how much to spend for that candidate. Our framework also analyses the role of reservations. We use records of 36,731 candidates who contested elections at either Lok Sabha or Assembly level during the last 5 years.

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The Market for Criminality: Money, Muscle and Elections in India

Cited by 29 publications

References 45 publications

Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India

Do criminally accused politicians affect economic outcomes? Evidence from India

Crime, Incentives and Political Effort: A Model and Empirical Application for India

Elections in India

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